just answer the question!

Ever Wonder Why They Won’t? They’ve Been Media-Trained. And the Public Is the Loser

BY TRUDY LIEBERMAN

Last July, just as the weapons inspector David Kay was about to brief a congressional committee on what he had found in Iraq, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appeared on Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour.

The host, Gwen Ifill, asked whether Kay had given the president new information. Rice said the president told Kay to take his time, search in a comprehensive way, in a way that makes the case and looks at all the evidence and tells us the truth. She added that the president wanted Kay to know that we are patient in finding out. She did not answer the question.

Ifill tried again. “So David Kay did not bring the president new information about new discoveries at that meeting yesterday?” Ifill asked. Rice wouldn’t budge. “I think that there is a danger in taking a little piece of evidence here, a little piece of evidence there. He is a very respected and capable weapons inspector. He knows how to read the Iraqi programs.” Although Rice had avoided the follow-up, Ifill let her continue with the administration’s pitch for war, laced with such phrases as “brutal dictator” and “ideologies of hatred.”

The interview served up no new evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and the exchange between Ifill and Rice illustrated what a CBS correspondent, Steve Hartman, calls the “orchestrated dance where nobody gets at the truth.” It’s a dance choreographed by media trainers on the one hand and by unwritten and unspoken rules of acceptable journalistic behavior on the other. Television guests tiptoe around the questions while interviewers either lose control or throw out softballs aimed at making sure their subjects will want to come back. Media training, a competitive and growing industry, teaches people all the fancy steps they need to answer the questions they want to answer, not those of an inquisitive reporter. The result: in too many cases, interviews become excuses to practice public relations, and instead of shedding light, they cloud public discourse. The captive public sits and watches the waltz glide by.

“About all we interview any more are professional talkers,” says Bob Schieffer, who tries to squeeze informational tidbits from those talkers every Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. The professional part, of course, stems from who his guests are, mainly public officials. But it also flows from the teachings of media trainers, a branch of public relations that originated at J. Walter Thompson in the mid-1970s. Media training was largely a dual response to the tough questioning of Mike Wallace and others on 60 Minutes and the needs of the new business-media outlets that called for a constant stream of corporate executives to chat on the air. Soon other p.r. firms established media training practices, sensing a lucrative sideline in coaching people to handle tough questions.

For $4,000 to $10,000 a day, trainers who are as ethically and intellectually diverse as journalists themselves teach the art of performing for the press. Thirty years ago many members of Congress did not have press secretaries, let alone coaches to show them how to behave in front of a camera. Today it’s a rare public soul who has not been media trained. The risks are higher for the untrained person, says Joyce Newman, who heads The Newman Group, a New York training firm: “Anything seen or said tracks you forever, and can come back to smack you in the face.” So politicians, government bureaucrats, and as many as 70 percent of corporate CEOs are taught how to parry reporters’ questions and deliver predetermined messages. Even flower sellers coached by the Society of American Florists know they should talk about the color of roses when reporters call about price gouging on Valentine’s Day.

As journalism has morphed into a cog in a great public relations machine, the fundamental relationship between journalists and their subjects has changed, turning the craft of the interview on its head. Where once journalists took the lead, prepared in depth for interviews, zeroed in on specifics, and connected the dots for their audience, those being questioned now lead the way, coached precisely on how to wrest control. Never assume knowledge on the part of the reporter, trainers counsel, and think of the interview as a collaboration, not a confrontation. To that end, The CommCore Observer, a monthly e-mail sent to clients by The CommCore Consulting Group, one of the country’s largest media training firms, advises clients “to prepare for media interviews as if they are educating the reporter. Much like a teacher develops a lesson plan, the interviewee can set context, provide perspective and control the direction of the interview.”

At a time when the audience makes decisions based on perceptions rather than facts, the goal is to create positive perceptions of companies and their products, politicians and their policies. The techniques, however, are the same, and the effect on the audience is the same as well: the control of information. Journalists are losing that control, says James Carey, a journalism professor at Columbia. “The upper hand has shifted to the public relations apparatus and other groups. People show up on news shows for an explicit avowed political or commercial purpose.” They are interested in journalists, Carey maintains, only as a conduit for their own interests and outlook. How they perform that function in the stream of mass communications gets to the nuts and bolts of media training.

GAINING THE UPPERHAND

Taking control One of the first rules of media training is to seize control of the interview, and skillful guests can do it from the very beginning.

An NPR Talk of the Nation program in October, which examined the regulatory efforts of the Food and Drug Administration, showed how it’s done. The program host, Korva Coleman, asked Peter Van Doren, an editor at the conservative Cato Institute, whether the FDA’s scientific panels ask the right questions when they review scientific data for new drugs and medical devices. “Well, I think so,” he said, adding quickly: “What I’d like to talk about is just the mistaken premises that some people have, mostly the public, I think, about what science can or can’t do,” which launched him into his message about the costs and benefits of regulation and personal choice.

When interviewees twist an interview to fit their agenda, they are in effect warning the questioner what to avoid and signaling how they want to structure the questions. Senator John Warner of Virginia did it when he challenged correspondent Andrea Mitchell on NBC’s Meet the Press last summer. When Mitchell asked him whether the president had sent Iraqis a taunting message to go after U.S. troops, he replied that it was not a taunting message, and said: “I want to turn to this other thing” — which was a discussion of how other nations were working with the U.S. in Iraq. At another point, Mitchell tried to press him on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. Warner said he wished his fellow Senator Mark Dayton had not said the U.S. should stop looking for weapons, then he signaled he did not want to linger on that topic, saying to Mitchell, “Let’s move on to other matters. I think we’ve covered this.” The conversation moved to security problems in Iraq. Later in the interview Warner was more explicit and asked: “Can we touch Africa?” Mitchell replied: “I want to talk about Africa, exactly,” and the interview steered away from a touchy subject: the timetable for stabilizing Iraq.

Dodging the question Some media trainers counsel clients not to answer the question that’s asked, but instead to give a response that fits with the message they plan to deliver. Others insist that’s deceptive and urge clients to at least acknowledge or “satisfy” the question and then steer or bridge to their messages. Being asked if the sky is blue and answering that the grass is green is out of vogue, they say.

“You don’t have to say what you don’t want to say. But you must acknowledge the question,” says Davia Temin, president of Temin and Company, a strategic-marketing and crisis-management firm. Saying “no comment,” though, is not advised since it’s seen as an admission of guilt. Nevertheless, says the longtime New York p.r. executive Richard Weiner: “There are twenty-seven different ways to avoid the question and twenty-seven ways to say no comment.”

When guests don’t want to answer, they use phrases such as: That’s such a complex subject . . . Your question is not relevant . . . You bring up an interesting point, but before I discuss it, I want to talk about . . . . Such dodges serve as a springboard to the message the guest wants to send. On Good Morning America in November Charles Gibson asked General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if he had honestly expected so many soldiers to be in harm’s way more than six months after hostilities officially ended. Myers responded not with a yes or no, but with: “You know, the Iraqi situation was complex from the start. I think we knew it was going to be very, very tough. And we’ve got to take the fight to them.” The rest of his answer touched on Iraqis helping the U.S., intelligence, and a newly found weapons cache — a classic example of the satisfy-and-steer technique drummed into every person who undergoes media training.

On CNN’s American Morning in October, it was clear that Howard Dean would have preferred not to answer Bill Hemmer’s question about whether he had supported cutting Medicare in 1995. Instead, the candidate took several detours, criticizing the way the Medicare program is run and talking about prescription drug benefits in Vermont, until Hemmer finally pinned him down by putting Dean’s own words up on the screen.

Telling a story The best way to answer questions is to tell a story, says Bill McGowan, whose firm, Biomentary, of Dobbs Ferry, New York, trains business executives. Telling a story eats up time, precludes a follow-up, and supports your message.

Virgil Scudder, an avuncular figure who has been in the training business almost from the beginning, also believes in the tell-a-story pedagogy. “Winners come in with a story to tell and know how to tell it; losers just answer questions,” he says. “Answering questions is like paying a toll on the toll road. You have to do it, but you’re there to take a trip.” The best trips offer anecdotes, examples, and third-party proof such as polls and words from significant historians or even The New York Times.

Once the story is told, says Jerry Doyle, CommCore’s senior vice president, never “break back into jail” — that is, never repeat or return to the original question, which may invite reporters to stay on a line of questioning you want to avoid. Instead, provide context, which can disarm the questioner.

Spreading the word “The evidence of a good interview is not just getting out alive, it’s what gets repeated,” says Doyle. “Good politicians can see the headlines as they are saying them. They know what survives the editor’s knife.” In other words, they are trained to speak in compelling sound bites that have a chance of recirculating the next day, thus reinforcing the basic message being sold. In early November Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared on Fox News Sunday. The host, Tony Snow, observed that the Iraqi people didn’t like being occupied and wanted U.S. troops out sooner rather than later. Rumsfeld said he had seen polls suggesting that the Iraqis were worried the U.S. would leave too soon, and then moved into his sound bite for the next day’s paper. “I agree with you, foreign troops in a country are unnatural. And the goal is not to keep them there. The goal is to keep them there only as long as they’re needed and not one day longer.” Sure enough, in the next day’s New York Times, Rumsfeld’s quote appeared in a page one story discussing the challenges the president faces in bringing stability to Iraq and maintaining public support.

Answering the easy part When journalists ask a two-part question, it’s a gift to the guest, who will rarely answer both parts. Coaches advise clients to tackle the easy question and go on at some length. That way the interviewer can’t remind them that they didn’t answer the other question, which is left hanging for the audience. Last September on CNN Paula Zahn interviewed Governor George Pataki of New York. Zahn observed that there were some strong allegations that the Bush administration through the EPA had misled New Yorkers about air quality after 9/11. “Is there anything you can say that will help make the population any more comfortable? And were New Yorkers misled?” Zahn asked. Pataki did not seem interested in challenging the EPA. He answered only the first part of Zahn’s question. “We relied on the EPA’s analysis,” Pataki said. “And I know right now, the city and the federal government are conducting a joint investigation into the health consequences. It is something that we have to be concerned about.”

Pitching platitudes When guests send out platitudes — that is, say nice things about the people they may ultimately criticize or appear to disagree with on the air — media trainers say there’s really subtle communication that’s taking place. When Condoleezza Rice calls David Kay “a very respected and capable weapons inspector,” when Senator John Warner refers to General Ricardo Sanchez as a “very fine and able officer”and to Senator Richard Lugar as “my distinguished friend and chairman,” they are really sending a signal: don’t look further for conflict between us. Such platitudes are a necessary thing in politics, says CommCore’s Doyle. If they’re missing from the conversation, the reporter might get suspicious and look deeper.

JOURNALISTS PLAY THE GAME

Increasingly, follow-up questions, which ideally should plug the gaps in an answer, are becoming casualties in the verbal joust between journalists and their well-trained guests, and too often softball questions have replaced hardball. Virgil Scudder observes what his profession has wrought: “The biggest failing of reporters today is not pinning down or following up. And they will ask a question too loosely constructed. It leaves too large a hole to go through.” Sometimes the hole is so large, the guest isn’t sure how to respond. In an interview last summer with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Fox’s Greta Van Susteren said she wanted to ask him about North Korea. Her question: “All right, what about North Korea?” Armitage replied: “A bad situation. What about it?” Van Susteren answered: “Well, what are we going to do about it, if anything?”

While open-ended questions allow guests to start talking, they also offer them a broad platform to hawk their messages. Corporate executives can drive right through such questions as: What’s your biggest challenge? How did you achieve those great earnings? Why is marketing changing? Politicians can do the same when interviewers ask: How do you explain that? Is there something to that? What about the charge that the president has politicized this whole issue? Emphasizing the point, Scudder says “most business interviews are extremely supportive and a piece of cake.” Questions with obvious answers provide yet another venue for message peddling. When the NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown asks the administrator of NASA if the culture of his agency can be fixed, is it a surprise when he replies “Oh, absolutely” and goes on with his pitch? When Paula Zahn asks Senator Joseph Lieberman to respond to Barbara Bush’s comments “that you and your Democratic colleagues are a pretty sorry group,” does she really expect him to say, Yes we are? Of course Lieberman said they weren’t and moved to an attack on the president.

There are many reasons for the lack of follow-up questions. News interviews are brief and interviewers may have four or five questions the show’s producer expects them to ask. Extra questions may mean the interviewer can’t stick to a pre-determined script, perhaps leading to second-guessing by higher ups. With broadcast organizations now profitable members of business conglomerates, interviewers may be unsure how far they can go. One media trainer says that in the time of Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly, journalists could bully their guests because they knew CBS was behind them. “They can’t be as abusive as they used to be,” she says. So unwritten rules now dictate acceptable behavior. Ask questions too harshly, and you’re outside the club. Says Columbia’s Carey: “These people are not adversaries who pretend to be friends. They are friends who pretend to be adversaries.” Bob Schieffer explains, “You don’t want to appear rude even though the guest can be filibustering and killing time, and you can’t ask what you want.” Schieffer’s colleague Steve Hartman says interviewers must be careful not to cut the guest off too soon or “you’re going to be perceived as someone who has a bias. Everyone is concerned about how they come across in this game.” They also know unhappy guests can complain. Indeed, The CommCore Observer suggests that clients meet with editors “when a reporter is not being fair or balanced.” If journalists stray out of bounds, they risk embarrassment or ostracism, like one reporter at a White House press conference in early October who asked press secretary Scott McClellan five times whether the Bush administration had a double standard when it came to investigating leaks — until an exasperated McClellan cut him off, effectively signaling: I’ve had enough of your behavior. Says Ronald Sims, a business professor at The College of William and Mary: “The good questioners are marginalized. Everyone knows the bulldog that doesn’t let go. Word gets around. Colleagues give looks. There are unwritten rules that this is not how you act so you go with the flow.” Few questioners want to be known as a bulldog. The hot guests, the “big gets” as they are known in the business, will go elsewhere. Few p.r. executives want to book someone on a show where the interviewer has a reputation for rough questioning. Most would rather have their clients interviewed by Larry King than by Mike Wallace.

Even when journalists do ask follow-ups, they rarely ask more than one. Three times is pushing it, says Schieffer. “You can’t ask a question four times. It’s obvious you’re not going to get an answer, and it becomes boring.” But is it boring, or does it cause the viewer to question the guest’s credibility? Last May on Good Morning America, FBI director Robert Mueller refused to give any hard evidence for recommending that the U.S. go on high terror alert. Diane Sawyer tried a follow-up question suggesting that by not answering the question the agency was perhaps playing down the warning after all. Mueller shot back: “Well, I wouldn’t put words in my mouth.” Then in an unusual on-air admission Sawyer gave up: “I know when I’ve been beaten on a question and a follow-up,” she said.

Follow-up questions do fail to draw out new information when well-trained guests dodge them as easily as the initial question, and even interviewers like Sawyer give up before eliciting a real answer . On Saturday Today shortly before the California recall election, host Campbell Brown asked Arnold Schwarzenegger’s spokesman Sean Walsh how he defined movie-set rowdiness — which is how Schwarzenegger had described his sexual escapades with women. Walsh didn’t say, replying that his boss was putting out a “message of hope and opportunity.” Brown politely said that she knew all that and asked the same question again, adding, “What is okay in his view in terms of what many women seem to have interpreted as sexual harassment?” This time Walsh said that if Schwarzenegger had been “either bawdy or inappropriate or giving people hugs, that that is not something that he is going to be doing in the future,” and eased into his message: “The bottom line here, from this perspective is, what are we going to do for California’s future?” Brown did not ask the obvious follow-up: Is groping women the same as giving people hugs?’

Reporters at times do follow up with pointed questions that clarify an issue, especially when the guest answers them forthrightly. When General Wesley Clark told Aaron Brown on CNN’s News Night in August that the U.S. entry into Iraq involved a “classic presidential-level misjudgment,” Brown quickly followed up. “What was the misjudgment?” Clark told him that the president had misjudged that going to war in Iraq would solve the war on terror, adding, “Seems to me that the only terrorists we’re finding there are the ones who have come back in to attack us since we arrived.”

Certainly, there are some strong interviewers in the business. On a 60 Minutes segment in October, Lesley Stahl noted that the government’s policy of giving tax breaks for buying SUVs for work purposes was encouraging people to buy the big, gas-guzzling vehicles. When Stahl said you could almost buy the whole car for the amount of the tax break, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said he would not concede that was the case. That’s when Stahl said there was evidence to show that’s how the tax credit was being used. Abraham admitted: “Well, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.” Stahl’s pursuit revealed to viewers the administration’s policy of supporting tax breaks for gas-guzzlers while doing little to pressure carmakers to build more fuel-efficient SUVs.

But in my examination of some fifty news transcripts, sharp questioning is unusual, raising the larger question of what the audience takes away when journalism appears to be little more than disguised public relations. Does the audience see through the culture of caution and obfuscation that permeates the news business? When TV guests practice question evasion, does the audience think twice about their credibility? Does the public see through polished answers and the platitudinous comments? Does it ask where the real meat and potatoes are?

Such questions bring up others: What are journalists for? Are they to analyze and interpret the news and arbitrate conflicting opinion for the public, or are they to act as mere carriers of other people’s messages?

It’s no secret that journalism has a credibility gap. Maybe it has always and by journalists who try less and less to close it.



© 2003 Columbia Journalism Review at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism